Making the Web 1000x Bigger
Bjarni Rúnar Einarsson • pageKite.net
Motives
Why make the web bigger?
Is the web too small? Seriously?
- The web is centralized, in the cloud
- Most devices are mere consumers - browsers
- Everything has to be "uploaded"
- 3rd party hosting is the norm
- ... so the power is centralized too
- Terms and Conditions
- Privacy Policies
- Censorship, DMCA, data retention laws, ...
When I imply that the web is too small, what I'm really getting at is that the vast majority of the devices connected to the Internet, participate in the WWW merely as consumers of data - publishing is centralized and generally takes place on 3rd party hardware.
This has certain fundamental implications for how we can use the web, both technical (we have to upload everything before sharing), and social, in the form of Terms and Conditions and of course Privacy Policies - which are barely ever read by anyone.
If anything, this trend is accelerating with the rise of SaaS, PaaS, "the cloud" and behomoths like Google and Facebook.
Who do we trust?
Who did we trust?
Means
Can we all host our own sites?
Why don't most people host their sites today?
Once upon a time...
- Web-servers were "high tech"
- Servers were expensive and "high tech"
- Desktops were insecure.
- We ran out of IPs!
- My radical argument: only 4. is a major issue today
Diagram: traditional web-hosting
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Enabling web-servers everywhere
With web-servers everywhere, how do we make them reachable without more IP addresses?
- Protocol-layer routing: tunnels and reverse proxies
- ... existing solutions:
- {Squid,Apache,lighttpd,Varnish} & {ssh tunnel,ssltunnel,VPNs}
- Tor hidden services & www.tor2web.com
- Opera Unite
- pagekite.py & pageKite.net - that's me
- IPv6?
Diagram: reverse proxied
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pagekite.py
Introducing pagekite.py
pagekite.py implements a tunneled reverse web proxy.
- General features ...
- Open source / free software - AGPL license
- Designed to be easy to use and deploy
- Is an HTTP and HTTPS reverse proxy
- Protocol-agnostic tunneling:
- Tunnels through firewalls and NAT (outgoing TCP)
- Uses adaptive compression (zlib)
- Implements both ends: front & back
- Built-in HTTP server for diagnostics
A trivial example
This is one way to make a web-server on localhost (ports 8000 and 8443) visible as http://bar.foo.net/ ...
foo.net $ sudo pagekite.py --runas=nobody \ --isfrontend --ports=80,443 \ --backend=http,https:*.foo.net:::s3cr37
laptop $ pagekite.py \ --frontend=foo.net:443 \ --backend=http:bar.foo.net:localhost:8000:s3cr37 \ --backend=https:bar.foo.net:localhost:8443:s3cr37
pageKite.net
Using pageKite.net
Another example, this time using the pageKite.net managed front-end service and enabling the HTTP user interface ...
laptop $ pagekite.py \ --defaults \ --httpd=localhost:9999 \ --backend=http:bar.foo.net:localhost:8000:s3cr37 \ --backend=https:bar.foo.net:localhost:8443:s3cr37
Magic!
New markets for web developers
unlimited server CPU
unlimited storage
user proximity
desktop integration
peripherals!
Share files, without uploading
>1TB online storage, cheap
Gaming
stream video: friends watch you play, live
decentralized multiplayer games
tel: 00 354 012 3456
tel: myphone.bre.klaki.net
OpenID server in your pocket?
Decentralization, independence, privacy
Freedom for the web
Thank you!
Questions?
Links:
- Code, company: pageKite.net
- Slides: pagekite.net/slides/fsfi2010/
- Github: github.com/pagekite/PyPagekite